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In the perfect ironic twist in the narrative of the Orlando Magic’s tragic turn, Marcin Gortat said he wants to come back home.

“I would love to join the team for maybe two or three months, or maybe half a season at least,” Gortat told Josh Robbins, my Orlando Sentinel colleague, last week.

Oh, mercy. Is it too early yet to start drinking if you are a Magic fan?

Gortat’s absence is one of those connect-the-dots reasons the Magic are missing from this year’s playoff conversation, and have been since the 2012 season.

In case you are too squeamish to look, the Magic have 12 victories, second-worst in the NBA, and have lost seven in a row. They have no trade assets of great value, especially with Nikola Vucevic out indefinitely after surgery in his left hand, and are cruising down that potluck lottery road again.

Which takes us back to December 2010. For those in need of a quick history primer, the Magic — and former general manager Otis Smith, in particular — blew up the roster late that month.

It was a multi-layered implosion: Rashard Lewis went to the Washington Wizards for Gilbert Arenas. The Magic also sent Vince Carter, Gortat, Mickael Pietrus, a 2011 first-round pick and cash considerations to the Phoenix Suns in return for Hedo Turkoglu, Jason Richardson and Earl Clark.

The Magic were in full-on championship mode back then and also cognizant of keeping a certain player named Dwight Howard in town. So they blew up a good team in the hopes of making it a great one.

“We had to do something,” then Magic president and CEO Bob Vander Weide told me at the time.

It was something, all right. Something very bad.

The Magic got a nice run early on and tricked folks like me into thinking this was a cool deal. In retrospect, it was horrible, and the franchise has never recovered.

Turkoglu and Richardson weren’t very good, but the real hot mess was Arenas (aka “Agent Zero”). He showed flashes of his All-Star form, but that was a mirage.

Some folks called Arenas “mercurial.” That was just a nice way of saying he was a train wreck, including a 50-game suspension in March 2010 for waving a gun in front of Wizards teammate Javaris Crittenton. But Smith had a close relationship with Arenas and pushed for the deal because of the bromance.

Ravaged by knee injuries — hey, it would have been nice to kick the tires before making the trade! — Arenas averaged eight points per game with a 40.6 shooting percentage.

The Magic waived Arenas the following December, using the amnesty provision allowing a team a one-time option to waive a player’s remaining contract from the salary cap and luxury tax.

The team still owed Arenas roughly $62 million on the final three years of his contract. Arenas and the Magic agreed to stretch out the payments, and the free money kept coming until 2015.

On the flip-side, Gortat has turned into a hard-nosed grinder at center for Phoenix and now Washington. He is a stat-stuffer both in points and rebounds, averaging as high as 15.4 and 10.4 in those categories.

Had the Magic not had itchy fingers, they could have survived the eventual defection of Howard and plugged Gortat into a lineup with Carter, Lewis, Ryan Anderson, Jameer Nelson and J.J. Redick.

That’s a solid playoff team with huge upside, and one that would have been stronger assuming the Magic still get Vucevic in the deal for Howard.

Oh, and coach Stan Van Gundy wouldn’t have been kicked to the curb either in all the dysfunctional chaos.

I know we’re all playing Monday Morning Point Guard here, or however you want to label it. But it remains a devastating twist in the depressing plot lines that have developed for this franchise since that time.

Gortat never wanted to leave. Even if he eventually comes back, it’s like chasing ghosts.

Things have been spooky around here since you left, Mr. Gortat. You’ve been warned.

They are mediocrity’s children, sprinkled with a touch of misery. At 11-17, they are a playoff tease, an aspiring eighth seed in the Eastern Conference, cluttered with lousy teams. Only eight of the 15 teams in the conference have winning records, making the playoffs a very attainable goal for the Magic.

We have enough of a sample-size at 28 games. A little more than a third of the season is complete, and the Magic now show equal signs of competence and futility. It is who they are. Magic management has cobbled together a good enough team that can win on any given night. Magic management has cobbled together a bad enough team that can lose to anybody.

They could easily have beaten the 6-19 Hawks on Saturday night in Atlanta only to have a meltdown in the closing minutes. As they are prone to do, it was rather epic.

With the score tied at 110, Kent Bazemore picked off a cross-court pass from Jonathon Simmons and dunked with 36 seconds left. Shelvin Mack’s 3-pointer from the corner was tipped and came up short. Bazemore then got the rebound with 21.6 seconds left and was fouled by Nikola Vucevic, After making two free throws, Bazemore then stole the ensuing inbounds pass from Elfrid Payton.

Game over, but the up-and-down drama continues for a while.

Orlando’s predicament goes back to the opening premise. Mediocrity in the NBA is No-Man’s Abyss. The goal for bad teams is to sink low enough to rise up with viable lottery picks. The Magic have tried that with very little success. The bounce of the ping-pong balls have not gone their way. It is the main reason — other than someone named Dwight Howard — that the Magic have not made the playoffs since 2012.

They got the right guy in Victor Oladipo in 2013, only to send him away in a misguided trade last season (see Ibaka, Serge). They got the wrong guy in Mario Hezonja in 2015, the fifth-overall selection and just one pick after the New York Knicks snagged Kristaps Porzingis.

He would have been a difference-maker for this team. Hezonja will become an unrestricted free agent next season, Orlando’s call and a signal that things have gone bust.

The good news is that the Magic seem to be on the right side of history now. They do have a nice batch of players, even if there is no superstar, the final arbiter of success and failure in the NBA.

The problem is that a bunch of them are currently unavailable. Aaron Gordon (18.3 ppg.), Evan Fournier (18.3 ppg.), Terrence Ross (9.0 ppg.) and Jonathan Isaac (6.1 ppg.) all missed the game against Atlanta with various injuries.

In a brutal two-way gut punch, the Magic lost Fournier to an ankle sprain and Gordon to a concussion with the span of a few days. They both are on the TBD timetable. Neither injury looks serious, but the Magic are not in position to dawdle.

That dark abyss looks like the likely scenario for the 2017-18 season: A one-and-done appearance in the playoffs, or a lottery pick that comes too late on Draft Night to make a significant impact, at least short-term.

At least the fan base isn’t screaming, most likely because people named Jacque Vaughn and Rob Hennigan have left the building.

The Magic will not lose games by design any more. They will lose simply because they don’t have enough talent to compete consistently every night.

At one point, things will flip. But if you are marking 2018 as the year that the Magic find their way back to relevance, you may want to find an eraser, as well as more patience.

Another Western Conference playoff hopeful. Another game that came down to the wire.

The Portland Trail Blazers fell to the Memphis Grizzlies, 98-97, Tuesday night at the Moda Center in yet another game that came down to crunch time.

But unlike last-second wins over the Los Angeles Lakers and Oklahoma City Thunder, the Blazers couldn’t conjure up any late game magic against the Grizzlies.

CJ McCollum scored 14 of his game-high 36 points in the final quarter, but he needed one more bucket to cap a dazzling late game performance. He carried the Blazers for most of the night, keeping Portland in range while Damian Lillard (4-for-16) and Jusuf Nurkic (3-for-9) never got untracked.

The Blazers struggled to slow Memphis forward Tyreke Evans (21 points on 15 shots) and committed a crucial turnover in final minute. And yet still had a chance to pull the game out in the waning seconds.

After McCollum hit a three-pointer to trim Memphis’ lead to one with 12.6 seconds left and then Shabazz Napier forced a turnover, giving the Blazers a final possession.

McCollum missed a pull-up mid-range jumper short and then failed to get a second shot off after he chased down his own miss.

McCollum scored 35 points on 14-for-26 shooting, including 4-for-10 from beyond the arc. Evan Turner added 16 points off the bench and Napier had his best game of the season, scoring 12 points and coming away with the crucial defensive play late when he pressured Mike Conley on an inbounds pass in the final seconds.

Conley scored all 20 of his points in the second half, Mark Gasol added 16 points, five rebounds and four assists and Evans finished with 21 points, getting into the lane at will all night.

THEY SAID IT

“If we can get a shot like that for CJ to win the game, I’ll take it every time,” Blazers coach Terry Stotts said. “It was a great look.”

TURNING POINT

Grizzlies guard Dillon Brooks reached in for a steal on Ed Davis, poking the ball away with 39 seconds left and triggering a fast break. Brooks finished in transition on the other end, drawing a foul and adding a free throw to put the Grizzlies up 96-91.

HOMECOMING

Brooks, the former University of Oregon standout, played his first professional game in Portland with his former coach in attendance. Oregon Ducks coach Dana Altman sat courtside across from the Grizzlies bench to watch Brooks make his third consecutive start. Brooks, the No. 45 pick in the June draft, finished with seven points and eight rebounds in 38 minutes.

Brooks was a part of Memphis’ two biggest plays of the game. His steal with 39 seconds left put the Blazers into scramble mode late. Then on the game’s final possession he defended McCollum’s initial jumper then chased the Blazers’ star down in the corner, preventing a second attempt before the buzzer. NEXT UP

The Blazers host the Brooklyn Nets on Friday night at 7 p.m. in Allen Crabbe’s first game back at the Moda Center since he was traded in the offseason.